H20-Diplo Article14 Review H-Diplo Article Review Editors: Thomas Maddux and H-Diplo Diane Labrosse H-Diplo Article Reviews Web and Production Editor: George Fujii h-diplo.org/reviews/ No. 476 Commissioned for H-Diplo by Thomas Maddux Published on 28 July 2014 Jeffrey A. Engel. “Bush, Germany, and the Power of Time: How History Makes History.” Diplomatic History 37:4 (September 2013): 639-663. DOI: 10.1093/dh/dht117. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/dh/dht117 URL: http://h-diplo.org/reviews/PDF/AR476.pdf Reviewed by Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University Man, the State, and No War hich matters more for setting state policy: the predilections of leaders or the systemic constraints within which leaders operate? Do the particular ideas W and preferences of senior policymakers drive states, or is foreign policy largely determined by geopolitical, organizational, or economic factors over which individuals have limited control.1 Jeffrey Engel’s “Bush, Germany, and the Power of Time: How History Makes History” bears on this perennial debate by examining George H.W. Bush’s influence on United States policy towards German reunification. As the title suggests, the author comes down squarely in favor of bringing the leader back in. “The puzzle,” as Engel writes, “is not why Bush embraced German reunification as a matter of policy [. .] the puzzle is why the prospect of a unified Germany bothered him so little” (640). In his telling, American policy towards Germany in 1989-1990 cannot be divorced from the personal attitudes of George Herbert Walker Bush and Bush’s “historical sensibility” (640). At a time when American allies (the United Kingdom and France) and opponents (the Soviet Union) opposed change in the European status quo, and senior members of his own Administration were lukewarm towards movement on the ‘German Question’, Bush’s reading of history pushed the United States towards backing German reunification. In 1 Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing theStatesman Back In,” International Security 25:4 (Spring 2001): 107–146. 1 | Page H-Diplo Article Review doing so, Bush not only preserved the United States’ outsized role in European security, but also avoided a clash with the Soviet Union in the process. Both developments would have been unimaginable just a few years prior. This is a very important article. At a time when the debate over the American role in the Revolutions of 1989-1990 and subsequent diplomatic negotiations is undergoing a renaissance, Engel’s work reminds us that foreign policy, despite its lofty perch as high politics, is still conducted by individuals and subject to the vicissitudes of human nature.2 Equally important, it offers a strong counterpunch to a wave of revisionist arguments suggesting the United States dragged its feet amidst the changes of 1989-1990 and was less important to the diplomatic deals that ended the Cold War in Europe than earlier works suggested.3 That said, the article suffers from some empirical shortcomings. Most importantly, it remains unclear whether Bush and the United States embraced the cause of German reunification from the start of 1989 or from some later date, why Bush sought to keep the United States in Europe, and thus whether, ultimately, Bush was ‘bothered’ by the prospect of a reunified Germany. These ambiguities do not undermine Engel’s effort to emphasize Bush’s role in U.S. policy, but they do suggest that Bush may have been more influenced by the geopolitical costs and opportunities present in 1989-1990 than his ‘reading of history’ itself: although Bush the individual played an outsized role in shaping American policy, his approach may have had as much to do with the variables traditionally associated with realist approaches to international politics – power, the risk of war, and the search for security – than anything caused by Bush’s deeper sense of history. Originally delivered as a SHAFR Bernath Lecture, Engel’s article is first and foremost interested in understanding how policymakers “deploy history as a prescriptive tool” as “a window into their worldview” (640). He usefully terms this use of history as policymaker’s “historical sensibility”: the combination of “experience, formal education, 2 Among others, see James Graham Wilson, The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014); Jeffrey A. Engel, The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989 (Oxford University Press, 2009); Mary E. Sarotte, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009); Svetlana Savranskaya, Thomas S. Blanton, and V. M. Zubok, eds., Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010); Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, “Pushing and Pulling: The Western System, Nuclear Weapons and Soviet Change,” International Politics 48, no. 4–5 (July 2011): 496–544; see also the Zelikow, Sarotte, and Wolfowitz chapters in Melvyn Leffler and Jeffrey Legro, eds., In Uncertain Times: American Foreign Policy After the Berlin Wall and 9/11 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).. 3 For works in this milieu, see Sarotte, 1989; Thomas S. Blanton, “US Policy and the Revolutions of 1989,” in Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Eastern Europe, 1989, ed. Svetlana Savranskaya, Thomas S Blanton, and V. M Zubok (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010), 49– 98; Gregory F. Domber, “Skepticism and Stability: Reevaluating U.S. Policy During Poland’s Democratic Transformation in 1989,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13:3 (2011): 52–82. 2 | Page H-Diplo Article Review and most importantly historical conclusions [. .] of how the past unfolded and what it meant” as a guide to current action (640). In Engel’s analysis, Bush’s historical sensibility encompassed three inter-related elements. The first was an underlying preference for “preservation over innovation,” “prudence,” and fidelity to established structures (645-647). Second was his willingness, perhaps stemming from the Christian value of ‘forgiveness,’ to embrace a “selective diminishing of the past’s importance” and “reconciliation” with actors – in this case, Germany – that had once posed a threat to the United States (649-651). Third, and somewhat in tension with the second, was a reading of history emphasizing, “that Europeans had never known peace on their own and never would. The Old World had only known peace when supervised by the New” (652). Baldly stated, Europe needed the United States if it was to avoid a renewal of the great power competition that precipitated the two World Wars: Bush had an underlying “faith in American centrality” (656). Together, Bush’s historical sensibility pushed him to embrace German reunification from his early days in office. Unlike leaders such as Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and France’s François Mitterrand, Bush did not fear the prospect of a reunified Germany as he “believed to his core that Germany had changed because faith and experience taught him that both people and nations were worthy of forgiveness” (660). Still, his preference for stability and an ongoing American presence pushed him to embrace reunification as a way of ensuring that NATO remained a viable security organization and mechanism for American power projection. This objective itself encompassed three components. First, embracing German reunification would blunt an ongoing Soviet peace offensive that might fracture NATO and evict the United States from Europe (656-658). Second, support for reunification meant being in a position to seek Germany’s continued fidelity to NATO. This issue became particularly important as onrushing events compelled policymakers to frame the terms under which Germany would reunify rather than question whether Germany should reunify (660). Finally, and as an outgrowth of the preceding, a reunified Germany inside of NATO would provide the United States ‘leverage’ in European politics writ large that could blunt any anti-American political or (especially) economic strategy the nascent European Union might seek (660-662). Ultimately, Bush’s inclination to forgive, to seek stability, and to ensure American access took “lessons drawn from history” (662) and applied them towards reaffirming the German-American relationship as the Cold War ended on American terms. This is an insightful and important article. The writing is lucid and the research is impressive. Engel does a particularly effective job sketching Bush’s background – born to wealth, a military veteran, an experienced operator, and leader of the moderate brand of East Coast Republicanism – and suggesting that these character traits influenced Bush’s policies in office. Given the opportunities for a radical change in U.S. policy towards Europe inaugurated by the decline of Soviet power and Revolutions of 1989, it may well have required an individual who had benefitted less from the status quo than George H.W. Bush to seek a radically new approach. That Bush, a man who reached the pinnacle 3 | Page H-Diplo Article Review of power by working within established channels, directed foreign policy meant the barriers for a radical change in American policy were likely that much greater. Different approaches to Germany and Europe may or may not have been in the United States’ best interest, but George H.W. Bush’s character itself may have augured for broad continuities in American policy towards Europe and thus support for German reunification. Beyond the specifics of whether Bush’s background shaped his policy on Germany, Engel’s work bears on three broader historiographic and theoretical debates. First is the issue of when and why the Cold War ended on terms wildly favorable to the United States. For more than twenty-five years, analysts have debated when the Cold War in Europe came to an end and the role of the United States in this process.